Monday, November 23, 2009

Hybred

“[outbreak stories] conspicuously turn the threat of disease emergence into an apocalyptic battle between heroic scientists and the hybrids who embody the threat (257)”

I was very interested in the passage above and how this opposition to hybridity serves to illustrate broader authoritative, univocal hegemony over consciousness. Especially since the discovery that viruses are not simply parasites but actually shape the life which they infect. In the lecture Wald spoke of biologization of life, what are the consequences of this process if it seen as a dialectical one, in which a foreboding hybrid, such as "Typhoid Mary," posits her identity as the result of a synthesis of host and parasite. How does this hybred induced anxiety translate in how other types of hybreds, such as those of a racial and cultural, as well as sexual base.